'She writes for Aunt Jane. They will come down here next Monday
because Aunt Jane is wanted to address the girls at the G.F.S. festival
on Tuesday.'

'Aunt Jane seems to have taken to public speaking,' said Harry. 'It
would be rather a lark to hear her.'

'You may have a chance,' said Lady Merrifield, 'for here is a note from
Mrs. Blackburn to ask if I will be so very kind as to let them have the
festival here. They had reckoned upon Tillington Park, where they have
always had it before, but they hear that all the little Tillingtons
have the measles, and they don't think it safe to venture there.'

'It will be great fun!' said Gillian. 'We will have all sorts of
games, only I'm afraid they will be much stupider than the Irish
girls.'

'And ever so much stupider than the dear 111th children,' sighed Mysie.

'Oh, no--that cost comes out of their own funds, Mrs. Blackburn takes
care to tell me, and Miss Hacket will find some one in Siverfold who
will provide tables and forms and crockery. I must go down and talk to
Miss Hacket as soon as lessons are over. Or perhaps it would save time
and trouble if I wrote and asked her to come up to luncheon and see the
capabilities of the place. Why, what's the matter?' pausing at the
blank looks.

'No, my dear. It is your morning with Mr. Poulter. And you must take
care not to come back later than eleven, Mysie dear; I cannot have him
kept waiting. Dolores, do you like to go?'

'Yes, please,' said Dolores, partly because it was at any rate gain to
escape from that charity-school lesson in the morning, and partly
because Valetta was looking at her in the ardent hope that she would
refuse the privilege of the walk, and it therefore became valuable; but
there was so little alacrity in her voice that her aunt asked her
whether she were quite rested and really liked the walk, which would be
only half a mile to the outskirts of the town.

Dolores hated personal inquiries beyond everything, and replied that
she was quite well, and didn't mind.

So soon as she and Mysie had finished, they were sent off to get ready,
while Aunt Lilias wrote her note in pencil at the corner of the table,
which she never left, while Fergus and Primrose were finishing their
meal; but she had to silence a storm at the 'didn't mind'--Gillian even
venturing to ask how she could send one to whom it was evidently no
pleasure to go. 'I think she likes it more than she shows,' said the
mother, 'and she wants air, and will settle to her lessons the better
for it. What's that, Val?'

'It will be your turn next, Val,' said her mother, cheerfully.
'Dolores comes between you and Mysie, so she must take her place
accordingly. And today we grant her the privilege of the new-comer.'

Dolores would have esteemed the privilege more, if, while she was going
upstairs to put on her hat, the recollection had not occurred to her of
one of the victim's of an aunt's cruelty who was always made to run on
errands while her favoured cousins were at their studies. Was this the
beginning? Somehow, though her better sense knew this was a foolish
fancy, she had a secret pleasure in pitying herself, and posing to
herself as a persecuted heroine. And then she was greatly fretted to
find the housemaid in her room, looking as if no one else had any
business there. What was worse, she could not find her jacket. She
pulled out all her drawers with fierce, noisy jerks, and then turned
round on the maid, sharply demanding--

'If--' but at that moment Mysie ran in, holding the jacket in her hand.
'I saw it in the nursery,' she said, triumphantly. 'Nurse had taken it
to mend! Come along. Where's your hat?'

But there was pursuit; Mrs. Halfpenny was at the door. 'Young ladies,
you are not going out of the policy in that fashion.'

'Mamma sent us. Mamma wants us to take a note in a hurry. Only to
Miss Hacket,' pleaded Mysie, as Mrs. Halfpenny laid violent hands on
her brown Holland jacket, observing--

'My leddy never bade ye run off mair like a wild worricow than a
general officer's daughter, Miss Mysie. What's that? Only Miss
Hacket, do you say? You should respect yourself and them you come of
mair than to show yourself to a blind beetle in an unbecoming way.
'Tis well that there's one in the house that knows what is befitting.
Miss Dollars, you stand still; I must sort your necktie before you go.
'Tis all of a wisp. Miss Mysie, you tell your mamma that I should be
fain to know her pleasure about Miss Dollars' frocks. She've scarce
got one--coloured or mourning--that don't want altering.'

Mrs. Halfpenny always caused Dolores such extreme astonishment and awe
that she obeyed her instantly, but to be turned about and tidied by an
authoritative hand was extremely disagreeable to the independent young
lady. Caroline had never treated her thus, being more willing to
permit untidiness than to endure her temper. She only durst, after the
pair were released, remonstrate with Mysie on being termed Miss
Dollars.

'They can't make out your name,' said Mysie. 'I tried to teach Lois,
but nurse said she had no notion of new-fangled nonsense names.'

'Ah! but Val was born at Malta, and mamma had always loved the Grand
Master La Valetta so much, and had written verses about him when she
was only sixteen. And Primrose was named after the first primrose
mamma had seen for twelve years--the first one Val and I had ever
seen.'

All this was chattered forth on the stairs before the two girls reached
the dining-room, where Mysie committed the feeding of her pets to Val,
and received the note, with fresh injunctions to come home by eleven,
and bring word whether Miss Hacket and Miss Constance would both come
to luncheon.

'Oh dear!' sighed Gillian, and there was a general groan round the
table.

'You see,' said Mysie. 'Yes, come along, Basto dear. You see Gill has
to be--down, Basto, I say!--a young lady when-- Never mind him,
Dolores, he won't hurt. When Miss Constance Hacket and--leave her
alone, Basto, I say!--and she is such a goose. Not you, Dolores, but
Miss Constance.'

'Not take dear old Basto! Why 'tis such a treat for him to get a walk
in the morning--the delight of his jolly old black heart. Isn't he a
dear old fellow? and he never hurt anybody in his life! It's only
setting off! He will quiet down in a minute; but I couldn't
disappoint him. Could I, my old man?'

Never having lived with animals nor entered into their feelings,
Dolores could not understand how a dog's pleasure could be preferred to
her comfort, and felt a good deal hurt, though Basto's antics subsided
as soon as they were past the inner gate shutting in the garden from
the paddock, which was let out to a farmer. Mysie, however, ran on as
usual with her stream of information--

'The Miss Hacket were sister or daughters or something to some old man
who used to be clergyman here, and they are all married up but these
two, and they've got the dearest little house you ever saw. They had a
nephew in the 111th, and so they came and called on us at once. Miss
Hacket is a regular old dear, but we none of us can bear Miss
Constance, except that mamma says we ought to be sorry for her because
she leads such a confined life. Miss Hacket and Aunt Jane always do go
on so about the G.F.S. They both are branch secretaries, you know.'

'I know! Aunt Jane did bother Mrs. Sefton so that she says she will
never have another of those G.F.S. girls. She says it is a society for
interference.'

'Yes; but she always looked after the school children at Beechcroft
before she married, and she and Alethea and Phyllis had the soldiers'
children up on Sunday. Alethea taught the little drummer boys, and
they were so funny. I wonder who teaches them now! Gill always goes
down to help Miss Hacket with her G.F.S. classes. She has one on
Sunday afternoon, and one on Tuesday for sewing, and she is the only
young lady in the place who can do plain needlework properly.'

'They can't mend,' said Mysie. 'Besides, do you know, in the American
war, all the sewing-machines in the Southern States got out of order,
and as all the machinery people were in the north, the poor ladies
didn't know what to do, and couldn't work without them.'

Dolores has heard her mother say something of this kind, and it came
into her head most opportunely as a defence of her father--for she
would not for the world have confessed that he did not talk to her as
Sir Jasper Merrifield seemed to have done to his children. In fact she
rather despised the General for so doing.

'Oh! but it is such fun picking up things out of lesson time!' said
Mysie.

'That is the Edge--,' Dolores was not sure of the word Edgeworthian, so
she went on to 'system. Professor Sefton says he does not approve of
harassing children with cramming them with irregular information at all
sorts of times. Let play be play and lessons be lessons, he says, not
mixed up together, and so Rex and Maude never learnt anything--not a
letter--till they were seven years old.'

'I didn't say she was stupid,' said Mysie, apologetically, 'only that
it must be very stupid not to be able to read till one was seven.
Could you?'

'Oh, yes. I can't remember when I couldn't read. But Maude used to
play with a little girl who could read and talk French at five years
old, and she died of water upon her brain.'

'Dear me! Primrose can read quite well,' said Mysie, somewhat alarmed;
'but then,' she went on in a reassured voice, 'so could all of us
except Jasper and Gillian, and they felt the heat so much at Gibraltar
that they were quite stupid while they were there.'

This discussion brought the two girls across the paddock out into a
road with a broad, neat footpath, where numerous little children were
being exercised with nurses and perambulators. At first it was
bordered by fields on either side, but villas soon began to spring up,
and presently the girls reached what looked like a long, low 'cottage
residence,' but was really two, with a verandah along the front, and a
garden divided in the middle by a paling covered with canary
nasturtium shrubs. The verandah on one side was hung with a rich
purple pall of the dark clematis, on the other by a Gloire de Dijon
rose. There were bright flower beds, and the dormer windows over the
verandah looked like smiling eyes under their deep brows of creeper-
trimmed verge-board. What London-bred Dolores saw was a sight that
shocked her--a lady standing unbonnetted just beyond the verandah,
talking to a girl whose black hat and jacket looked what Mysie called
'very G.F.S.-y.'

The lady did not turn out to be young or beautiful. She was near
middle age, and looked as if she were far too busy to be ever plump;
she had a very considerable amount of nose and rather thin, dark hair,
done in a fashion which, like that of her navy blue linen dress, looked
perfectly antiquated to Dolores. As she saw the two girls at the gate
she came down the path eagerly to welcome them.

'Ah! my dear Mysie! so kind of your dear mother! I thought I should
hear from her.' And as she kissed Mysie, she added, 'And this is the
new cousin. My dear, I am glad to see you here.'

Dolores thought her own dignified manner had kept off a kiss, not
knowing that Miss Hacket was far too ladylike to be over-familiar, and
that there was no need to put on such a forbidding look.

Mysie gave her message and note, but Miss Hacket could not give the
verbal answer at once till she had consulted her sister. She was not
sure whether Constance had not made an engagement to play lawn-tennis,
so they must come in.

There sounded 'coo-roo-oo coo-roo-oo' in the verandah, and Mysie cried--

Miss Hacket said she had been just feeding them when the G.F.S. girl
arrived, and as Mysie came to a halt in delight at the aspect of a
young one that had just crept out into public life, the sister was
called to the window. She was a great deal younger and more of the
present day in style than her sister, and had pensive-looking grey
eyes, with a somewhat bored languid manner as she shook hands with the
early visitors.

The sisters had a little consultation over the note, during which
Dolores studied them, and Mysie studied the doves, longing to see the
curious process of feeding the young ones.

When Miss Hacket turned back to her with the acceptance of the
invitation, she thought she might wait just to help Miss Hacket to put
in the corn and the sop. Meantime Miss Constance talked to Dolores.

'That is my ambition! I once spent six weeks in London, and it was an
absolute revelation--the opening of another world. And I understand
that Mr. Maurice Mohun is such a clever man, and that you saw a great
deal of his friends.'

'I used,' said Dolores, thinking of those days of her mother when she
was the pet and plaything of the guests, incited to say clever and pert
things, which then were passed round and embellished till she neither
knew them nor comprehended them.

'That is what I pine for!' exclaimed Miss Constance. 'Nobody here has
any ideas. You can't conceive how borne and prejudiced every one her
who is used to something better! Don't you love art needlework?'

'Maude Sefton has been working Goosey Goosey Gander on a toilet-cover.'

'Oh! how sweet! We never get any new patterns here! Do come in and
see, I don't know which to take; I brought three beginnings home to
choose from, and I am quite undecided.'

'Mrs. Sefton draws her own patterns,' said Dolores. 'Something she
gets ideas from Lorenzo Dellman--he's an artist, you know, and a
regular aesthete! He made her do a dado all sunflowers last year, but
they are a little gone out now, and are very staring besides, and I
think she will have some nymphs dancing among almond-trees in blue
vases instead, as soon as she has designed it.'

'Isn't that lovely! Oh! what would I not give for such opportunities?
Do let me have your opinion.'

So Dolores went in with her, and looked at three patterns, one of tall
daisies; another of odd-looking doves, one on each side of a red
Etruscan vase, where the water must have been as much out of their
reach as that in the pitcher was beyond the crow's; and a third, of
Little Bo Peep. Having given her opinion in favour of Bo Peep, she was
taken upstairs to inspect the young lady's store of crewels, and choose
the colours.

Dolores neither knew nor cared anything about fancy work, but to be
treated as an authority was quite soothing, and she fully believed that
the mere glimpses she had had of Mrs. Sefton's work and the shop
windows, enabled her to give great enlightenment to this poor country
mouse; so she gladly went to the bedroom, with a muslin-worked toilet-
cover, embroidered curtains, plates fastened against the wall, and
table all over knick-knacks, which Miss Constance called her little
den, where she could study beauty after her own bent, while her sister
Mary was wholly engrossed with the useful, and could endure nothing but
the prose of the last century.

Meantime Mysie had forgotten how time flew in her belief that in one
minute more the young doves would want to be fed, and then in amusement
at seeing them pursue their parents with low squeaks and flutterings,
watching, too, the airs and graces, bowing, cooing, and laughing of the
old ones. When at last she was startled by hearing eleven struck,
there had to be a great hunt for Dolores in the drawing-room and
garden, and when at last Miss Hacket's calls for her sister brought the
tow downstairs more than ten minutes had passed! Mysie was too much
dismayed, and in too great a hurry to do anything but cry, 'Come along,
Dolores,' and set off at such a gallop as to scandalize the Londoner,
even when Mysie recollected that it was too public a place for running,
and slackened her pace. Dolores was soon gasping, and with a stitch in
her side. Mysie would have exclaimed, 'What were you doing with Miss
Constance?' but breathlessness happily prevented it. The way across
the paddock seemed endless, and Mysie was chafed at having to hold back
for her companion, who panted in distress, leant against a tree,
declared she could not go on, she did not care, and then when, Mysie
set off running, was seized with fright at being left alone in this
vast unknown space, cried after her and made a rush, soon ending in
sobbing breath.

At last they were at the door, and Wilfred just coming out of the
dining-room greeted them with, 'A quarter to twelve. Won't you catch
it? Oh my!'

'Are they come?' said Lady Merrifield, looking out of the schoolroom.
'My dear children! Did Miss Hacket keep you?'

'Ah! Mysie, I must not send you on a message next time. Mr. Poulter
has been waiting these twenty minutes, and I am afraid you are not fit
to take a lesson now. Dolores looks quite done up! I shall send you
both to lie down on your beds and learn your poetry for an hour. And
you must write an apology to Mr. Poulter this afternoon. No, don't go
in now. Go up at once, Gillian shall bring your books. Does Miss
Hacket come?'

'Yes, mamma,' said Mysie humbly, looking at Dolores all the time. She
was too generous to say that part of the delay had been caused by
looking for her cousin, and having to adapt her pace to the slower one,
but she decidedly expected the avowal from Dolores, and thought it mean
not to make it. 'And, oh, the jam!' she mourned as she went upstairs.
While, on the other hand, Dolores considered what she called 'being
sent to bed' an unmerited and unjust sentence given without a hearing;
when their tardiness had been all Mysie's fault, not hers. She had no
notion that her aunt only sent them to lie down, because they looked
heated, tired, and spent, and was really letting them off their
morning's lessons. It was a pity that she felt too forlorn and sullen
even to complain when Gillian brought up Macaulay's 'Armada' for her to
learn the first twelve lines, or she might have come to an
understanding, but all that was elicited from her was a glum 'No,'
when asked if she knew it already. Gillian told her not to keep her
dusty boots on the bed, and she vouchsafed no answer, for she did not
consider Gillian her mistress, though, after she was left to herself,
she found them so tight and hot that she took them off. Then she
looked over the verses rather contemptuously--she who always learnt
German poetry; and she had a great mind to assert her independence by
getting off the bed, and writing a letter to Maude Sefton, describing
the narrow stupidity of the whole family, and how her aunt, without
hearing her, had send her to be for Mysie's fault. However she felt so
shaky and tired that she thought she had better rest a little first,
and somehow she fell fast asleep, and was only awakened by the gong.
She jumped up in haste, recollecting that the delightful sympathizing
Miss Constance was coming to luncheon, and set her hair and dress to
rights eagerly, observing, however, to herself, that her horrid aunt
was quite capable of imprisoning her all the time for not having learnt
that stupid poetry.

She hesitated a little where to go when she reached the hall, but the
schoolroom door was open, and she heard a mournful voice concluding
with a gasp--

'Our glorious semper eadem, the banner of our pride.'

And Miss Vincent saying, 'Now, my dear, go and wash your face, and try
not to be such a dismal spectacle.'

And then Mysie came out, with heavy eyes and a mottled face, showing
that she had been crying all the time she had been learning, over her
own fault certainly, but likewise over mamma's displeasure and Dolly's
shabbiness.

'Oh! I'm glad of that. I wish poor Mysie had done the same. I
believe it was what Lady Merrifield intended, you both looked so
knocked up.'

Dolores cleared up a little at this, especially as Miss Vincent was no
relation, and she thought it a good time to make her protest against
mere English.

'Oh!' she said. 'I supposed that was the reason she gave me such a
stupid, childish, sing-song nursery rhyme to learn. I can say lots of
Schiller and some Goethe.'

'I advise you not to let any one hear you call Lord Macaulay's poem a
nursery rhyme, or it might never be forgotten,' said Miss Vincent
gaily. Then seeing the cloud return to Dolores's face, she added, 'You
have been brought forward in German, I see. We must try to bring your
knowledge of English literature up to be even with it.'

Dolores liked this better than anything she had yet heard, chiefly
because she had learnt from her books that governesses were not
uniformly so cruel as aunts. And besides, she felt that she had been
spared a public humiliation.

By this time the guests were ringing at the door, and Miss Vincent,
with her had on, only waiting till their entrance was made to depart.
Dolores asked whether to go into the drawing-room, and was told that
Lady Merrifield preferred that the children should only appear in the
dining-room on the sound of the gong, which was not long in being
heard.

The Merrifields were trained not to chatter when there was company at
table, besides Mysie and Val were in low spirits about the chance of
the blackberry cookery. Miss Hacket sat on one side of Lady Merrifield,
and talked about what associates had answered her letters, and what
villages would send contingents of girls, and it sounded very dull to
the young people. Miss Constance was next to Hal. She looked amiable
and sympathetic at Dolores on the opposite side of the table, but
discussed lawn-tennis tournaments with her neighbour, which was quite
as little interesting to the general public as was the G.F.S. However,
as soon as Primrose had said grace, Lady Merrifield proposed to take
Miss Hacket down to the stable-yard; and the whole train followed
excepting the two girls, who trusted Hal to see whether their pets
would suffer inconvenience. However it soon was made evident to
Gillian that she was not wanted, and that Dolores and Constance had no
notion of wandering about the paved courts and bare coach-houses, among
the dogs and cats, guinea-pigs, and fowls. Indeed, Constance, who was
at least seven years older than Gillian, and a full-blown young lady,
dismissed her by saying 'that she was going to see Miss Mohun's books.'

'Oh, certainly,' said Gillian, in a voice as though she were rather
surprised, though much relieved.

So off the friends went together--for of course they were to be
friends. The Miss Mohun had been uttered in a tone that clearly meant
to be asked to drop it, so they were to be Dolores and Constance
henceforth, if not Dolly and Cons. Dolores was such a lovely name that
Constance could not mangle it, and was sure there was some reason for
it. The girl had, in fact, been named after a Spanish lady, whom her
mother had known and admired in early girlhood, and to whom she had
made a promise of naming her first daughter after her. No doubt
Dolores did not know that Mrs. Mohun had regretted the childish promise
which she had felt bound to keep in spite of her husband's dislike to
the name, which he declared would be a misfortune to the child.

Dolores was really proud of its peculiarity, and delighted to have any
one to sympathize with her, in that and a great deal besides, which she
communicated to her new friend in the window-seat of her room. When
the two ladies went home, Constance told her sister that 'dear little
Dolores was a remarkable character, sadly misunderstood among those
common-place people, the Merrifields, and unjustly used, too, and she
should do her best for her!'

Meantime Gillian, finding herself not wanted, had repaired to the
schoolroom.

'Oh, it is of no use,' sighed Mysie, disconsolately. 'I've ever so
much morning's work to make up, too. And I never shall! I've muzzled
my head!'

By which remarkable expression Mysie signified that fatigue, crying,
and dinner had made her brains dull and heavy; but Gillian was a
sensible elder sister.

'Don't try your sum yet, then,' she said. 'Practise your scales for
half an hour, while I do my algebra, and then we'll go over your German
verbs together. I'll tell Miss Vincent, and she wont' mind, and I
think mamma will be pleased if you try.'

Gillian was too much used to noises not to be able to work an equation,
and prepare her Virgil, to the sound of scales, and Mysie was a good
deal restored by them and by hope.

So when at length Constance had been summoned by her sister, who tore
herself away from the arrangements, being bound to five-o'clock tea
elsewhere, Mysie was discovered with a face still rather woe-begone,
but hopeful and persevering, and though there still was a 'bill of
parcels' where 11 and 3/4 lbs. of mutton at 13 and 1/2d. per lb.
refused to come right, Lady Merrifield kissed her, said she had been a
diligent child, and sent her off prancing in bliss to the old 'still-
room' stove, where they were allowed a fire, basins, spoons, and
strainers, and where the sugar lay in a snowy heap, and the
blackberries in a sanguine pile.

'There's partiality!' thought Dolores, and scowled, as she stood at the
front door still gazing after Constance.

Aunt Lilias took the unwilling hand, led Dolores into the schoolroom,
and for half an hour she went over the verses with her, explaining what
was new to the girl, and vividly describing the agitation of Plymouth,
and the flocks of people thronging in. 'I must show her that I will be
minded, but I will make it pleasant to her, poor child,' she thought.

And it could not have been otherwise than pleasant to her, but that she
was reflecting all this time that she was being punished while Mysie
was enjoying herself. Therefore she put the lid on her intellect, and
was inconceivably stupid.